Thursday, October 18, 2018

Apple’s Parental Controls Are Bad, But So Are Microsoft’s

As sex education site O.school found, Apple’s new web filter is pretty bad. But all web filters are bad. Even Microsoft’s web filter, for Windows 10 and Xbox One, allows neo-Nazi websites and instructions for committing suicide.

This setting only affects the Microsoft Edge and Internet Explorer browsers, but the filter automatically blocks other common browsers like Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox from running while it’s enabled.

We ran some quick tests and found that, while Microsoft’s web filter doesn’t approach the level of awfulness in Apple’s new web filter, it’s also nowhere near perfect.

Despite the description saying this will “block inappropriate websites” and prevent “results that are too mature” from appearing, it seems like this filter mostly blocks pornography.

That’s fine, but you can still access some nasty stuff. Microsoft’s web filter won’t let a child visit 4chan, but it does allow neo-Nazi news website The Daily Stormer. It doesn’t block searches like “how to join isis” or “how to commit suicide” either.